Revisiting Roald Dahl

So when gilly a.k.a vinay asked me to issue two books for him, I went straight to the section where Roald Dahl's books were kept and picked up "Collected Short Stories of Roald Dahl." First of all, they are, well, short stories and add to it a brialliant combination of unpredictability, an old world charm and a decent speed and we have that nice recipe which is missing these days and so while the book is still lying in my room, I am re-reading some of the stories I like the best. Some of which are -

• The Hitchhiker
• The Landlady
• Bitch
• Lamb to the Slaughter
• The Umbrella Man
• The Butler
• The Bookseller
• The Visitor
  

Come to think of it, there is something about short stories which makes it a better option than the occasional huge novels (specially the ones like Fountainhead which ran 700+ pages and had such a small font.) Some blame it on my small attention span, but my strong feeling is that there's my father's influence at play here. He himself is a (very huge) fan of short stories and if one ever asked him the authors he liked the most, he'll always give the names best known for their short stories like Anton Checkov, O. Henry, Sommerset Maugham, Guy De Maupassant, Roald Dahl and Saki. Though I haven't read much of his stuff, I hope to complete all one day.

adios
sashidhar